THE SIMPLE DECISION DEMOCRATS MUST MAKE IN ORDER TO WIN AGAIN

A few weeks ago the new president of the Florida Democratic Party, Sally Boynton Brown, caught some flak when she told a group of progressives that changes in store for the party include messaging that makes a conscious appeal to emotion, and rigorous script testing, likely through soft polling and focus groups.

The problem as many progressives see it is that after losing so much ground, message resurfacing is not the change we need. There is an urgent need to transform the party, to regain relevancy—and that doesn’t come with message tweaks more commonly associated with failed Centrist strategizing.

Lucky for us, someone has articulated what transformative change within the Democratic would actually look like.

Zach Carter, Huffington Post’s political economy senior editor, laid out a recent tweet storm around this basic thesis: “The Democratic Party can be the party of the Good Aristocrats, or it can be the Anti-authoritarian Party. But it has to pick one.” By all rights this idea needs to be expanded into a book-length meditation. It’s that pertinent.